Published date: 17 August 2032
Four years ago, it was proposed that gasoline and diesel vehicles be banned from certain cities and states but the new trend towards mobility as a service has caused a major re-think. It’s not enough to insist on electric vehicles; privately owned cars are just so wasteful!
Private cars have been banned in New York and London which was the final nail on the coffin. Due to high levels of pollution, highly industrialised countries like China and Japan had already banned them last year and the other two big markets – USA and the UK – did not have enough of an incentive to be ahead of that pack. They were mostly going for electric vehicles but those too did not alleviate the problems of modern mobility as urban populations skyrocketed during the final years of the previous decade came
Sandton, South Africa is a classic case where all businesses flocked to the richest mile in Africa and workers brought with them hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Analyst David van Wyk said their traffic monitoring models conclude that, on average, a person spends a sixth of a day stuck in traffic. 4 hours in traffic in an 8 hour work day!
Four years ago, it was proposed that gasoline and diesel vehicles be banned from certain cities and states but the new trend towards mobility as a service has caused a major re-think. It’s not enough to insist on electric vehicles; privately owned cars are just so wasteful!
Now it’s becoming illegal to own your own car. It takes up too much of the city’s resources, parking and charging; and the wasted asset, standing idle while you are not travelling – where’s the sense in that?
Fleet vehicles can be kept busy through the latest mobility platforms, which have even unseated Uber as the most popular choice, massively reducing the need for parking and multi-lane highways. Public transport has been democratized, down to serving an individual, on demand.
To prevent retro reactionaries from upsetting this new urban order, London and New York have simultaneously come out with a ban on private car ownership. If you want to operate a privately-owned car, it’s got to be beyond the city limits.
Jimmy Drummond, the current host of car show ‘Top Gear’ was heard to scoff: “They won’t be seeing me in the city any time soon!” But the show’s ratings are down and declining. Other than ‘petrolheaders’, there’s not much interest in cars these days.
The simple fact is, you really don’t need your own car anymore; mobility has become a service you access on demand. What a pleasure!
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[Despite appearances to the contrary, FutureWorld cannot and does not predict the future. MindBullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, challenge and stimulate strategic thinking. Use these at your own risk. Any reference to actual people, entities or events is entirely allegorical]